For Elara, the descent into Alistair Finch's world of darkness should have been the ultimate terror. Instead, it felt like a homecoming.
His obsession, which would have sent any other woman screaming into the night, was to her a balm on a wound she had carried for so long she'd forgotten it was there. The way his eyes followed her, hungry and possessive, did not feel like a threat. It felt like being seen. For the first time in her life, she was not just seen, she was wanted. And not in a casual, dismissive way. She was wanted with a desperation that mirrored her own.
It was a feeling so foreign it left her breathless.
Her mind drifted back, as it often did in the quiet moments, to the house where she had learned her place. A beautiful, cold manor that had felt less like a home and more like a museum she was not allowed to touch.
Her earliest memory was of warmth. Of her mother's laugh, a sound like bells, and the scent of rosewater. She remembered sitting on a rug, watching sunlight dance through the window, perfectly content, perfectly safe. Perfectly loved.
Then the coughs started. The same wracking, bloody coughs that had later claimed Clara and nearly claimed her. The memory was a blur of hushed voices, drawn curtains, and the terrifying absence of that bell-like laugh. Then, one day, the silence was permanent. The warmth was gone. The world turned grey.
Her father was a kind man, but a weak one, shattered by his grief. He retreated into his ledgers and his brandy, leaving a small, lonely Elara to be raised by a succession of stern nannies. She was a ghost in her own home, a quiet reminder of a loss too painful to look at.
Then came the stepmother. A severe, sharp-featured woman with a smile that never reached her eyes. She arrived with her own son, Silas, a boy with cold, pale eyes that seemed to look through people to assess their worth.
That was when Elara learned the word "unwanted."
The new family was a closed unit. Her father, desperate for a semblance of happiness, poured his affection and attention into his new wife and her charming son. Elara was the inconvenient relic of a past life. She was fed, clothed, and educated, but she was utterly, profoundly superfluous. She was the portrait on the wall that didn't match the new décor.
Silas was the master of the subtle cruelty that left no marks. A condescending pat on the head. A "joke" about her quietness at the dinner table that made everyone but her laugh. He would take credit for her drawings, charming his way into praise, while her own accomplishments were met with a distracted, "That's nice, dear."
She was not abused. She was erased.
Her one value, she learned, was as a bargaining chip. As she grew, her stepmother began to speak of marriages, of alliances, of merging fortunes with a series of odious, older men. Elara was not a person; she was an asset to be traded. Her inheritance, held in trust, was the bait. Her body and her future were the currency.
The cough returned. A part of her wondered if her body, in its profound loneliness, had simply given up. The fever had been a welcome oblivion. The final memory, the one that still haunted her, was of Silas standing over her bed. Not with concern, but with a calculating, eager look. He wasn't watching a sister die. He was watching a problem solve itself. He was smiling.
To wake up in a coffin was the final, brutal confirmation of her deepest belief: she did not matter. Her life was worth less than the dirt they shoveled onto her.
And then… Alistair Finch.
He had dragged her back into a world that had never wanted her. He had been moments from cutting her open. His initial horror had been for his own crime, not her suffering.
But something had shifted.
He had not just saved her life. He had given her a purpose. He had needed her. First to keep his secret, then to save his sister. Her presence was not superfluous; it was critical. Her mind was not something to be dismissed; it was sharp, useful, an asset to him.
And the way he looked at her… It was the antithesis of being erased.
His gaze was a physical touch. It cataloged her, memorized her, claimed her. He was a man of intense, frightening focus, and he had focused that entire formidable will on her.
To someone who had been a ghost, being seen so completely was the most potent drug imaginable.
His darkness did not frighten her because she understood it. It was the flip side of her own despair. His obsession was not a cage; it was a shelter. In a world that had always tried to get rid of her, here was a man who would seemingly burn the world down to keep her.
When he looked at her with that possessive, hungry gleam, a thrill went through her that was part fear, part pure, undiluted exhilaration. He wanted her. Not her inheritance, not her family connections. Her. The real her. The one who was brave enough to lie to the police, smart enough to understand his work, strong enough to survive being buried alive.
His touch, when it came, was not the condescending pat of Silas or the absent-minded stroke of her father. It was specific. Intentional. It was a brand. When he tucked her hair behind her ear, it was an act of mapping territory. When his hand lingered on hers, it was a promise and a threat.
She knew, on some level, that this was not healthy. That this kind of all-consuming passion was a danger in itself. But she was past caring. She had tasted a lifetime of being unwanted. To be wanted like this desperately, fiercely, obsessively was a need so deep it overrode all sense of self-preservation.
He thought his darkness was a monster she should fear. He didn't understand that it was the very thing that made her feel safe. In the absolute blackness of a grave, you don't pray for a gentle light. You pray for a fellow monster who sees in the dark.
Lying on her blanket next to his, listening to his ragged breathing in the dark, she made her own pact with the darkness.
If he was willing to be a monster for her, she would gladly be his monster in return.
She would let him be obsessed. She would stoke that obsession. She would meet his darkness with her own. Together, they would be an island of two, surrounded by a world that had rejected them both. He had pulled her from the earth. She would now anchor him to it.
She was no longer Elara Vane, the unwanted daughter, the forgotten heiress.
She was Alistair Finch's singular, terrifying purpose.
And for the first time since her mother died, she felt like she was exactly where she belonged.